by Claudia Bruemmer

Now is the time for retailers and online merchants to start planning website improvements for year-end holiday ecommerce sales. There is so much to do if your ecommerce site is going to achieve record holiday sales, and much of the planning associated with holiday marketing should start soon. Below are 9 tips on how to prepare for your 2011 holiday traffic.

1. Start Early

It may sound strange to start thinking about Christmas in July, but there is so much work to be done behind the scenes in planning for a successful online holiday season that it’s smart thinking to start now. This article covers tips for preparing your website. Your preparations should also include plans search marketing campaigns, banner ads, social media initiatives and email campaigns, which is beyond the scope of this article. You really need about six months to get all this planning and implementation done.

2. Support Heavy Traffic

You can expect more traffic during the holiday season. So before launching your holiday marketing campaigns, you need to know your website can withstand the increased traffic loads that will likely occur. To find out what your options are when you get traffic spikes, you can ask your hosting provider about cloud-hosting, which can be scaled to meet your changing traffic needs.

3.  Easy Navigation

Shoppers will bail if they can’t find what they want quickly, and especially during the holiday season when they are in a hurry and need to decide between many attractive offers. Make it easy for your customers to buy on your website by doing the following:

• Use mega-menus that reveal web page content with a mouse-over, and go sparingly on your headers and footers.
• Offer good site search to help consumers find products faster. You can also monitor site search queries to learn what keywords your customers use to find your products and services.

4. Wish List and Gift Registry Options

These options for subsequent purchases can help increase sales and word-of-mouth advertising. Product Wish Lists of items consumers aren’t ready to buy now can be shared with third parties, which gets the word out. The same goes for Gift Registries, which are commonly used for weddings and other significant life events.

5. Smart Coupons

Smart coupons can help you make money now. They’re also good for cross-selling and up-selling. Smart coupons differ from one-dimensional offers like “15% off your next purchase.” They are based on complex rules allowing you to make offers that are increasingly compelling depending on desired behavior ─ “Buy One, Get 15% off,” “Buy 2 Get 20% off,” and “Buy 3 Get 30% off PLUS free shipping.” Some platforms allow setting rules based on SKUs, brands, price range, geographic location, etc. Tested and monitored, smart coupons can help you sell more without extra effort.

6. Reward Programs

Your traditional reward programs give points based on purchases. However, rules-based rewards can encourage certain actions (points for product reviews/blog entries/tweets) in addition to purchases. Your loyalty rewards program must offer meaningful rewards to individual customers.

7. Global Payments

Ensure your site is capable of accepting multiple forms of payment beyond PayPal and credit cards if you sell internationally. By accepting multiple forms of payment, you can lower shopping cart abandonment.

8. Live Chat and Help Desk Software

You must integrate the customer support systems in your platform to ensure timely response and gain access to relevant customer information. Your help desk software should be integrated within the platform, establishing security settings so sensitive information from back office applications is only available to authorized parties. Integrate Live Chat with your Help Desk software so you can work from one interface to get central access to customer information, notes about conversations and order changes.

9. Thank You and Follow-up Emails

Customer follow-up and thank you emails can be handled automatically by your platform. You can establish smart triggers to send a specific gift, based on the type of order. For example, if a customer buys an expensive item, you can send a gift certificate toward future orders. If it’s a low-value item, you can offer a percentage discount on future orders.

In closing, it’s never too early for retailers and online merchants to start planning website improvements for year-end holiday ecommerce sales. There are many things to do to get your website ready for holiday sales. The 9 tips above should help you prepare for your 2011 holiday traffic.